Last Sunday, my friend and I were rushing for a movie called “Blackhat” (*Shriek* OMG LEE HOM!). It was 11.30am when we reached Vivocity, finding our way to GV – 11.45pm, dropping by a few fashion outlets – 12pm, found GV – 12.10pm, deciding which movie to watch (hesitate between Blackhat and Theory of Everything, no way. Lee Hom – first priority) – 12.20pm, bought our tickets – 12.25pm. Next, deciding what’s for lunch.

Well, it was a quick agreement that we were going for Sushi Tei but looked at the queue, we were not going to make it for Blackhat! So we turned back and strolled around a few restaurants. We stopped by a Thai restaurant which I didn’t bother to look at the restaurant name. There was no queue – great! It was 12.35pm.

The first question that we asked the receptionist was, “how long must we wait to be served our food? We want to catch a movie at 1.15pm”. The girl said they could try to expedite the dishes for us but was uncertain whether they could meet our time frame. But seeing this pair of “hesitating customers”, her manager came forward swiftly to assist her. He assured us that they could serve us food as soon as possible although it depends on which dishes we order. He also quickly make a few suggestions of dishes that could be served fast. Pineapple rice was on the suggestion list so we agreed.

We were ushered to a nice seat and we made our order. It was 12.40pm. We were speechless as my friend wasn’t really happy about all the rush. Opps, sorry. :x The silence seemed like forever until the pineapple rice arrived, followed by the mango sticky rice. It was 12.43pm. We had our food without talking much. Haha, then it was 12.55pm. I wasn’t just eating my food. I was busy observing how the restaurant is being run. And yes, I forgot to snap photos of my food! Urgh.

The Pineapple rice did look like this! Stole this pic from their website :x

A waiter took orders then keyed in orders. Another waiter served the food, then received another order. On the way, that waiter noted someone who wanted to get the bill. Another waiter (I think they call the managers “in charge” or something) came out with the bill. That first waiter cleared some plates. A customer raised hand at the waiter, another waiter noted and came over. (Yeah, that was me asking for my bill) The whole process was so fluent and you see no waiter avoided eye contact with any customers.

This is what I called COLLABORATIVE, PROACTIVE employees. It was a well-trained culture, embedded in each of the employee – from the receptionist to the chef (I assume, just look at the speed of cooking my pineapple rice).

Within 20 minutes, they earned our money, freed up the seats and ready to serve more customers. Fast deal. Sometimes, when you see a long queue in a restaurant, it doesn’t represent how nice the food or how popular the restaurant is (may be, it’s just famous for the queue). May be, it simply shows how slow their processes are. I could name a few such restaurants but that’s not the point here.

I didn’t take note of the restaurant name until I find the services satisfying. From now on, I will remember this restaurant name for good reasons. However, if I were to leave the restaurant, feeling angry, disappointed ,and dissatisfied, I would have remembered the restaurant name as well – a reminder that I shall never ever step into it again.

All right, back to this experience. So, I guess you know which restaurant I meant. Tadaaaa, it’s the nice nice Thai Accent! And their tagline is “Hospitality with a Heart“. How true is that. Kudos to the manager named Hong Tai (hopefully I get your name right). With nice interior and nice food is not enough. Nice staff is still the most important factor in getting your customers and raising your profit. (Hopefully I can get a chance to interview their management team eh?)

Hospitality with a Heart!

Nice interior! Photo credit: Thai Accent website.

And the last thing we said before we leave the restaurant? “Let’s come back here again some time to enjoy the good food slowly!” =D

Have you ever thought of how many patients does a doctor have to sacrifice in order for him/her to gain enough experience to be called a good doctor? How many failures (in curing a patient) does a doctor need to go through before he/she learns?

Fresh inexperience doctors are being deployed in public hospitals and they are the doctors facing the new patients daily. New faces, new cases, they try anything on the patients until the patients seem to be cured. They are unsure of anything so they conduct all kind of experiments and eliminate the possible causes using trial and error. They could even send the patients for multiple X-Rays, EEG, MRI scans and come back telling you that they still can’t find anything abnormal. (“Yeah, we just want to confirm there is nothing abnormal!”) Just how much damages had inflicted on the patients after going through those scans? Not mentioning the money.

It’s true that you can’t blame them for not knowing how to make the right judgement as soon as possible. I’m just wondering where have the experienced doctors gone to? Don’t these inexperience doctors need them as coach? Don’t the patients need the experienced doctors to save them from being harmed by those redundant experiments?

Really? Is that how our human body react to the drugs? Able to adapt to new types of drugs everyday and show the accurate results overnight? Worse still, able to show the result at the time when the doctor comes to visit the patient?? (“Stay one more night for observation?” One more night of experiment you mean. There you go, money.)

I’m not a doctor and I seriously have no idea. It’s a pity to all of us, non-doctors, to have to accept whatever treatment that a doctor has to give us – be it right or wrong. We have no proof to show whether they are curing us or making our conditions worse. What is money compared to health? Nothing at all! Just have to trust them eh?

Disclaimer: No guarantee that I will continue this post but yah, blogging is a good way to collect my thoughts!

Covalent is a scientific term describing the chemical bonds formed when atoms share electrons to form a stable compound. Each atom by itself may or may not be useful but when it forms bonds with other atoms (which may not be of the same kind of element), it becomes something useful in our daily lives. Look at carbon and diamond. A precious diamond is a result of covalent bond of carbon atoms. The bond that is formed is so strong that it would need a large amount of energy to break it.

If we see this in the context of an organization, where each employee is like an atom, a covalent bond is formed when the employees share their “electrons” or rather the knowledge, skill sets, and expertise that they possess. They form “compounds” or teams with infinite possibilities. The teams formed are diverse, dynamic yet stable, and with strong bonds. Imagine an employee with good project management skill; he could bring his “electrons” anywhere with him to form the covalent bond with another employee with say, good marketing skill. Together with some other employees with other skill sets, they could form a team that would ensure a product is launched perfectly to the market on time. Then this employee could bring his “electrons” to form covalent bond with another employee who is so passionate about research and development. They could again form a team that would give birth to new innovations. In this diverse organization of ours, imagine how many covalent bonds we could form and how many high performing teams we could anticipate.

We always talk about breaking the silos in an organization. But how exactly can we do that? Silos are inevitable, and they are sometimes formed so naturally that we do not notice. We all have our personal interests and priorities. It is difficult not to have the mindset that when someone is ahead of us, we are at the behind. So if I lend you a hand to push you to the front of me, I am behind you. But we should not just confine our perspective to what is in front and what is behind us while ignoring the bigger relativity. Remember, as an organization, when someone moves ahead of us, the organization moves as well; when we push someone forward, we push the organization forward too. The force is conserved. However that person may not always be running in front of us. There will certainly be times when someone else, including that person whom we helped before, may give us a push forward. Again, the organization is moving forward. If we could keep such dynamic, can you imagine how far we can go?
Having said that, if our people hide behind the silos wall and deny the ability to give someone else a push, how can we move forward? Perhaps, we should all push and demolish the wall of silos? Will that create more commotions and halt the organization movement? Alternatively, we want our people to stand up, to stand out from the silos and say, “Hey, I can do this, I can do that. If you ever encounter an issue regarding this and that, come and look for me!” We want them to stand out from the silos and say, “Help! We need someone with such expertise, can anyone help us?” We do not want experts to be confined within silos and similarly we do not want problems and failures to be kept in the silos.
We want to build a culture – where our people are proactively sharing while learning and supporting each other. That would naturally break the silos and foster strong collaboration among our people. We know where to find resources, we know who to look for advices, we know what we can help… and we let others know as well. With that, teams will be performing better than ever before. Organization could move forward faster than ever before. The bond stays strong and it keeps on growing as new healthy blood are injected (let’s talk about new blood injection – or talent attraction, next time) and integrated well into the existing system.

It happened, it happened and it happens again.
There are times when you got so excited about a sudden inspiration or idea, you did research, you drafted out the plans, you visualized the outcomes, and you smiled to yourself, saying that “what a genius I am”.

Then, boom.

Someone is currently working on the similar idea while you are dreaming, while you are pitching to the people around you. Then one day, you see it, your idea, comes to live. Not done by you, the genius, but someone else. Everyone said, “see, someone else is already doing it”.

You collapsed, demoralized, blamed yourself for not turning your idea into a reality.

Then, one day you got the eureka moment again. And the same process repeats.

You fall and fall again as it happens over and over again.

One day, you know the same idea is out there, and people has implemented it. Indeed, it is proven to be very successful. You know it is definitely something worth to implement. Then you proposed. But it happens again, “Yes, what you proposed is exactly what we are going to do soon”. You are still, slower.

But on a positive note, you are slower, but the original idea is still there. You just need that one try out of thousands to keep your work up to date with what you think you want to do, and get ahead of others.

And when no one believe in your ideas and dreams, it’s okay to be the only one to hold on to that.

“Hey mom, look. That fruit juice stall is selling one glass of fruit juice at minimum $5.90. Every month, I would be earning more than what I earn for a year right now if you let me start a fruit juice stall instead of sending me to university.”

Haha, no way. I will be called an ungrateful child if I say that.

One day, I will be a First Class Graduate fruit juice seller and I will be grateful that I am not a secondary school fruit juice seller. Phew.

I have recently encountered two cases whereby money was charged unreasonably. I lodged complaints and were very satisfied with the customer services and actions that I received. In this digitized era, customer is not the king but customer with social media is the king. Retails and service providers understand the power of social media and the threats that it can bring upon their business. Therefore, they ensure that customer relation officers and complaints handlers take cautious steps and actions that will make customers happy and satisfied. Well, being satisfied is often not enough as these are the passive customers. What they want is “Promoter”, customers who are satisfied and happy with their services and promote to tell their friends and the whole world! Like me! Haha, I think it’s worthwhile writing this post to share the experience I had with these 2 service providers since they make me happy! ;D Yes, I do it for free and I can always complain for free too. I have always wanted to create a blog or platform for customer advocates but nahhhh, no time to make it big yet.

Raffles Medical

So, I was sick a few weeks ago and I decided to go to the nearest clinic – Raffles Medical. Well, on the plastic bag, it writes 24/7 but be reminded that’s not the case for all clinics.

It was my first time there. I rarely visit the doctor when I’m sick but I need an MC this time round. The consultation was fast as usual, same for all clinics so far. The doctor prescribed me 5 types of medicines which include paracetamol, cough syrup, lozenges, throat swelling pills, runny blocked nose pills. To be honest, my condition wasn’t that serious. Then I proceeded to the payment counter. I was charged a certain amount. (Whut?! No way I’m gonna fall sick again!) I asked for corporate discount and hey, to my delight, there is 5% discount! While happily thinking how good my company is, to my utter surprise, the final bill is 14% more than the initial amount! I questioned the cashier, she can’t do anything about it. She said calling to the finance team to alter the bill to the previous one (before discount) will be too troublesome. I was not happy at all!

So I walked home, ate my medicine, and send them a Facebook message. I think I am being kind for not posting on their Facebook wall. Haha. Anyway, the admin replied me the next day asking for my IC and phone number so that they can look into the case. A few days later, someone from Raffles Medical HQ called me and told me that they are looking into this matter and it seemed that their system was having an error back then. She asked me to give them a few days to analyse the problem further and will get back to me as soon as possible. Well done. Calm tone, assuring words, that’s customer complaints handling technique.

A few days later, she called me again and informed me that that was indeed a system error that they did not issue me a corporate discount. Then she asked me to collect the good-will cash reimbursement for the discount from the clinic I visited anytime. :D

I am therefore a happy, satisfied customer.

Wix
Last night I received a call from an old friend. We worked on a common web project 2 years ago (from 2012 to 2013). We created a website on Wix.com and purchased a premium plan package. That costed us 74.5 USD (50% discount) and we used her card to make payment. After the end of the project, we decided to discontinue the website and agreed to change the payment method from her card details to my sister’s card details.

We thought it is all settled. We didn’t check the email, we didn’t login to the Wix website anymore.

But she was charged 149 USD on 20th December, as a recurring payment for yearly premium plan. We were surprised. Her card provider is unable to cancel the transaction and we don’t really have much hope that Wix will actually respond to us.

But they did. Faster than what I could imagine.

I sent them an email last night, saying that we did not intend to purchase the premium plan and demand a refund. (Opps, now I feel bad for sounding quite demanding in my email) There is a support function on the site where we could schedule a call. I tried my luck. I scheduled a call for today, 6AM to 7AM Singapore time, and gone to bed. I prayed hard that this could be solved.

The next morning (today), 6AM, I did not get any call. I was slightly disappointed but did not lose hope as I can still call their direct line later. Then at 7AM, I received a call from Wix! It was an automated call and I have to wait a while for an available operator to attend to me. The timing is just nice, my laptop is up and Gabriella (sorry if I spell your name wrongly) talked to me.

She listened attentively and when I said, “umm….I wonder if we can get a refund?” She replied affirmatively, “Yes sure!”. I could see snow of happiness and relief falling upon me. She then asked for my Wix account email. She performed a check and told me that a refund has already been issued to me on 30th December. O_O Huh? She put me on hold and did a confirmation with her supervisor. She came back to me saying that the plan has been cancelled and a refund has been made. My friend should be able to receive the amount back within 7 to 10 working days. What a relief!

Thank God!

Thanks Wix team too! Now I believe that their customer support is really something! ;)

People say that things sometimes happen for a reason.
Perhaps like what I learned since young, God has everything planned from the start. Sometimes, there are choices to be made but anyhow if you leave it to Him, He will put things back onto the right track.
Some people say, words not meant to be spoken – it’s better to keep them till death. Things don’t go as you wanted, better to let them be.

Let it go.To love and to be loved.
Those two things are described as the most precious feelings, greatest things on Earth. But if you are loved by the 2 person whom you love? Then you are guilty.

Love is a verb. Then it becomes a noun. But if you stop loving, the love fades.

Let it fade.

Not sure if this is the right song to represent how I feel right now but yeah, this nice song keeps swirling in my head.